


Cold Fingers

by cofax



Series: This is Not Wartime [6]
Category: Stargate SG-1
Genre: AU, Apocafic, This is Not Wartime
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-03-09
Updated: 2010-03-09
Packaged: 2017-10-07 20:01:16
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 495
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/68728
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cofax/pseuds/cofax
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><i> Jack, I don't think it works that way this time.</i>   For Salieri.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Cold Fingers

**Author's Note:**

> Posted August 2004.

_Don't die_, he said to Carter, and he meant it desperately. They've lost too many already. Siler and Davis and Hammond, Whitehead and Patel. The nameless thousands dead in the surgical strikes on Cheyenne Mountain, on Fallon and Lemoore, Mountain Home, Bragg, Long Beach, Pearl and Norfolk. Not nameless, though: not nameless to their families, comrades, themselves.

 

Jack drops onto the granite boulder he's designated his "chair" with a weary groan. Carter will be okay. She's Carter, and she always pulls through. Teal'c will be okay: he'll find a symbiote, line up allies, kick some goa'uld ass.

 

But Jack's so fucking tired, and he's sick to death of sending men and women off to die while he sits here, a spider in a web of intrigue and military politics. He just wants to get drunk and sleep for a week. He leans back against the withered pine behind his rock, and rolls his head up to stare through the long needles at the grey spring sky.

 

Cold fingers touch his cheek, trail down to his jawline, and then slip behind his head. They flex against tendons and muscles so tight he feels them twanging. A hard thumb digs into the dip at the base of his skull, and Jack groans aloud, then looks around to make sure nobody heard that.

 

"Nobody heard that, Jack." Daniel is a shadow in the corner of his eye, barely visible in the dull midafternoon light. Today he's wearing a leather jacket over a v-neck sweater. He looks annoyingly clean.

 

Jack peers suspiciously around the campsite. Most of the team are out on patrol or sacked out asleep after a long night. Teal'c sits placidly on a log across the firepit, but nobody is paying any attention to Jack.

 

He swivels his head back to Daniel. "Okay. But keep it down."

 

Daniel shrugs, one hand still working the muscles of Jack's neck. "Why should I? I'm not really here."

 

"Oh, yeah. Right." Jack knows that. He just--doesn't like to think about it. "So--are you dead?"

 

With a sigh, Daniel draws his hand away, and moves around to crouch on the ground, facing Jack. "How should I know? I'm your hallucination."

 

"Yeah, but I've hallucinated you before, and that was real." _And you came back_, but Jack doesn't say that.

 

"Jack, I don't think it works that way this time."

 

Something drips down the back of Jack's neck, cold water from a lump of snow that hadn't yet melted. He stiffens, and then slumps again wearily.

 

"I know. But--just stick around, would ya?" He doesn't want to plead, and he doesn't want to think about what this conversation says about his mental state. He's having disturbingly personal conversations, disturbingly _physical_ interactions, with a man he's 99 percent sure is dead.

 

Daniel rests his hands on Jack's knees and leans forward. "That I can do." And he cups Jack's cheek with one hand, and this time it's warm.

 

 

END


End file.
